In aircraft, user interface terminals, called MCDU (for ‘multipurpose control and display unit’ in English), allow a user (pilot, co-pilot) to control various systems, called peripheral systems here, of the aircraft. These user interface terminals are thus used as a common platform for interaction with the user in order to control these peripheral systems.
These user interface terminals respectively include a screen, on which the names of the peripheral systems connected to the user interface terminals are displayed via a selection page. When the user selects a peripheral system via this selection page, the user interface terminal in question hands over to the selected peripheral system. The control operations performed on said user interface terminal are then transferred to the selected peripheral system for processing, and the graphical interface displayed on the screen is generated by the selected peripheral system.
One problem that is encountered with these user interface terminals is that they have a limited number of ports allowing peripheral systems to be connected thereto. It is desirable to mitigate this drawback. It is desirable in particular to provide a solution allowing the number of ports of these user interface terminals to be expanded, without having to replace them with user interface terminals having a larger number of ports. It is also desirable to provide a solution that makes it possible to expand the number of ports of these user interface terminals, transparently for the user interface terminal, for the peripheral systems and for the user.